Do you remember what you were into when you were twelve years old? Are you still into the same things?
I've discovered plenty of new things to be enthused about in the last twenty years, but I'm still very much a fan of the things that I liked then. I still like Sherlock Holmes, I still like Doctor Who, I still like Transformers, I still like comics, and I still like wrestling.
Yes, I'm not kidding about that last one. I'm a huge wrestling fan and have been since I was twelve. I'd heard about Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior and the Legion of Doom and Jake "The Snake" Roberts, and it all seemed very exciting and over-the-top. When my parents got SKY for the first time, I became hooked very quickly.
It's particularly weird getting to do something new with regards to something that's become a big part of your life. It's a bit like when the new series of Doctor Who started in 2005. You kind of start a new relationship with it and it leads you to re-evaluate things a little.
With wrestling, the relationship changed firstly because I started finding out about what went on behind the scenes. It opened up a whole new avenue, as I got to learn that as big and over-the-top as things were on-screen, they were often as petty and sleazy behind the scenes. I was fascinated.
This ended up leading me to the point where I spent a while working as a Ring Announcer for British wrestling, and got to learn a load of the technical side about the shows and got to chat to a lot of wrestlers. It was a little like being a stage-hand for a magician.
But throughout the years, I had never seen Hulk Hogan live. I didn't see much of him as a kid - he was retiring when I first started watching, and he occasionally turned up for very short runs. For various reasons, I hated him with a passion as I began to learn more about the industry, but in recent years (and, not coincidentally, as he's become less relevant), I've begun to appreciate how well he does what he does.
So, strangely, it was the opportunity to see Hulk Hogan live that led to me going to the Impact! Wrestling show at Wembley Arena on Saturday. Even when my fellow London-based wrestling fan friends couldn't make it, and my girlfriend didn't fancy sitting through three hours of wrestling (and who can blame her?).
It was partially in acknowledgement to my twelve-year-old self. The idea that, twenty years later, the things I enjoyed then, I still enjoy now. Not everyone gets why I like it, and that's fine. There are even people that assume that I'm a bit weird because I like it. That's fine too.
Having never seen him, even on television, the twelve-year-old me would have done anything to see Hulk Hogan live. In the same way that I would have done anything to go and visit the set of Doctor Who, or wander around Baker Street.
I don't know if I enjoyed things on a much more simple level then, and if I constantly try to revisit that. I didn't like things in a complicated way. I didn't have any sense of embarrassment of being a fan of things. Maybe it was a more pure enjoyment. Maybe not.
But for one night, Hulk Hogan finished a night of entertainment by shamelessly pandering to the crowd. He ran in to save some goodies from being beaten up, but before he did so, he looked at the crowd. "What should I do?", he seemed to plead as he looked around questioningly. The crowd responded by roaring approval, so he pointed his finger at the baddies, then beat them all up. He went to celebrate with the guy he'd rescued (James Storm), and left him to bask in the adulation of the crowd. But Storm made clear that the crowd wanted to see Hogan. Hogan looked round, as if he was unsure. So we cheered more, and then he ripped off his shirt and posed for us all. For ten minutes straight. And we all loved it.
For one night, I regressed to being twelve years old. The only important thing was that Hulk Hogan beat up the baddies, then invited us all to celebrate with him.
And all was right with the world.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Sunday, 22 January 2012
David Cameron and the British Film Industry
This is a routine I performed at Working Title Comedy at the Big Green Bookshop on January 20th. It went down well, but because it's topical, it's one I may not reuse any time too soon - so I thought I'd stick it up here.
David Cameron said the British Film Industry should concentrate on making commercial successes. Because they're obviously not managing to do so without his help.
It reminded me of a quote by the famous screenwriter William Goldman - he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All The President's Men, the Princess Bride...films like that, and he said "When it comes to the movie industry, nobody knows anything", and what he meant by that was that everyone's trying to make a hit, and they're trying to, but everyone makes mistakes.
But I went back to the book where he wrote that, "Adventures in the screen trade", because I was aware that sometimes quotes leave off half of what was actually said. Like in Richard III, where the line is famously "Now is the winter of our discontent", meaning now, things are bad. But what he actually says is "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York", meaning that things were bad, but are now good. And I looked at it, and it's the same thing. William Goldman didn't say "When it comes to the movie industry, nobody knows anything. William Goldman actually says "In the movie industry, nobody knows anything...except David Cameron. He does."
Back in the eighties, Stephen Spielberg made a run of three of the biggest movies made at that point in time. Jaws, ET, Indiana Jones....then he made 1941, which was a complete flop. If only he'd spoken to David Cameron before making that film, and he'd have said "No, Stephen, know your limits and make Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
Michael Cimino made The Deer Hunter for the studio United Artists, one of the oldest, most respected film studios in the world, and he followed it up with one of the most expensive films of all time, Heaven's Gate, which ended up being terrible. Left with no options, United Artists gave it a huge, expensive promotion campaign to try and
recoup their massive losses...if it wasn't a hit, the studio would go under, but try what they might...it made no money, and thousands of people lost their jobs.
If only they had called David Cameron. He would have said "Michael, I respect your intention to fulfil your artistic calling, but this film needs a very special dog."
John Travolta, in the mid nineties was in the worst career period of his life. He'd just finished making "Look Who's Talking Now"...(the dogs were talking)...and things were going badly enough that he was grateful for the work. Then, he bumped into David Cameron, who said to him "Have you seen Reservoir Dogs? You should get in touch with the director. Sure thing there, mate". And the two of them remained friends for years, and Travolta had a second spring....and then they fell out and we got Battlefield Earth.
If only he'd continued to listen to David Cameron.
We can presumably look forward to films like "Four Weddings and a Terminator", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Predator", "Don't look now, but Justin Bieber is right over there" and "Corialanus 2 - The Dark of the Moon".
The British Film industry has responded in kind to David Cameron, and they've said "What David Cameron needs to do is to just make more jobs and just fix the economy. Rather than tell us that we need to make more commercial films while his government kills off the UK Film Council and blocks a Pinewood Studios extension.
Arsehole."
David Cameron said the British Film Industry should concentrate on making commercial successes. Because they're obviously not managing to do so without his help.
It reminded me of a quote by the famous screenwriter William Goldman - he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All The President's Men, the Princess Bride...films like that, and he said "When it comes to the movie industry, nobody knows anything", and what he meant by that was that everyone's trying to make a hit, and they're trying to, but everyone makes mistakes.
But I went back to the book where he wrote that, "Adventures in the screen trade", because I was aware that sometimes quotes leave off half of what was actually said. Like in Richard III, where the line is famously "Now is the winter of our discontent", meaning now, things are bad. But what he actually says is "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York", meaning that things were bad, but are now good. And I looked at it, and it's the same thing. William Goldman didn't say "When it comes to the movie industry, nobody knows anything. William Goldman actually says "In the movie industry, nobody knows anything...except David Cameron. He does."
Back in the eighties, Stephen Spielberg made a run of three of the biggest movies made at that point in time. Jaws, ET, Indiana Jones....then he made 1941, which was a complete flop. If only he'd spoken to David Cameron before making that film, and he'd have said "No, Stephen, know your limits and make Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
Michael Cimino made The Deer Hunter for the studio United Artists, one of the oldest, most respected film studios in the world, and he followed it up with one of the most expensive films of all time, Heaven's Gate, which ended up being terrible. Left with no options, United Artists gave it a huge, expensive promotion campaign to try and
recoup their massive losses...if it wasn't a hit, the studio would go under, but try what they might...it made no money, and thousands of people lost their jobs.
If only they had called David Cameron. He would have said "Michael, I respect your intention to fulfil your artistic calling, but this film needs a very special dog."
John Travolta, in the mid nineties was in the worst career period of his life. He'd just finished making "Look Who's Talking Now"...(the dogs were talking)...and things were going badly enough that he was grateful for the work. Then, he bumped into David Cameron, who said to him "Have you seen Reservoir Dogs? You should get in touch with the director. Sure thing there, mate". And the two of them remained friends for years, and Travolta had a second spring....and then they fell out and we got Battlefield Earth.
If only he'd continued to listen to David Cameron.
We can presumably look forward to films like "Four Weddings and a Terminator", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Predator", "Don't look now, but Justin Bieber is right over there" and "Corialanus 2 - The Dark of the Moon".
The British Film industry has responded in kind to David Cameron, and they've said "What David Cameron needs to do is to just make more jobs and just fix the economy. Rather than tell us that we need to make more commercial films while his government kills off the UK Film Council and blocks a Pinewood Studios extension.
Arsehole."
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Real Life Simulations
The first of them were basic in form. They can't have been any more than about twenty pixels. They had limited functionality and limited needs. They lived in data memories and fed on commands.
Everybody was told that these things had been invented. As if they were somehow ours to do with as we pleased. And every time they evolved, we were told that the programming had become more complex. Because, obviously, we were making enormous technological leaps forward every single year. And we all believed it, possibly because we wanted to believe it.
My first one was simple enough to catch and fit on a keyring. An LCD display and three buttons. When I was younger, I had sea monkeys, and because they seemed to be a kind of powder, I believed that they'd been made, not simply reanimated on contact with water.
I was never good at feeding them. Not when they swam around in the water, or when I just had to press a button. They had a volume control that, now, seems like an exercise in cruelty. All we did was stop them screaming from hunger. And then we reanimated them with a battery and made them go through it again.
As they evolved, we found more complex ways of keeping them captured. Restricting the data they fed on to CDs and transferring them to files which could be opened and closed at will. We could feed them so many more commands and give them what seemed like a happier life.
I stopped feeding one once, just to see what would happen. He looked out at the screen, slowly becoming less mobile and begging me to help. I'd just override his commands, confusing him. I watched him, over the hours, starve to death. And then I laughed with my friends about it.
If you asked me, I'd swear I didn't know that they could feel pain. But deep down, I knew. I knew and I laughed with my friends about how it turned green and died.
Everybody was told that these things had been invented. As if they were somehow ours to do with as we pleased. And every time they evolved, we were told that the programming had become more complex. Because, obviously, we were making enormous technological leaps forward every single year. And we all believed it, possibly because we wanted to believe it.
My first one was simple enough to catch and fit on a keyring. An LCD display and three buttons. When I was younger, I had sea monkeys, and because they seemed to be a kind of powder, I believed that they'd been made, not simply reanimated on contact with water.
I was never good at feeding them. Not when they swam around in the water, or when I just had to press a button. They had a volume control that, now, seems like an exercise in cruelty. All we did was stop them screaming from hunger. And then we reanimated them with a battery and made them go through it again.
As they evolved, we found more complex ways of keeping them captured. Restricting the data they fed on to CDs and transferring them to files which could be opened and closed at will. We could feed them so many more commands and give them what seemed like a happier life.
I stopped feeding one once, just to see what would happen. He looked out at the screen, slowly becoming less mobile and begging me to help. I'd just override his commands, confusing him. I watched him, over the hours, starve to death. And then I laughed with my friends about it.
If you asked me, I'd swear I didn't know that they could feel pain. But deep down, I knew. I knew and I laughed with my friends about how it turned green and died.
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Professor Dalson: Lord of Hell
It was a Friday when Professor Bill Dalson died. He was surrounded by his family, and confirmed his atheism to the last.
He woke up surrounded by fire and brimstone. A demon poked him with a pitchfork.
"Come on," the demon said. "No rest for the wicked."
The Professor sat up, looked around, and then put his head back down on the hot floor.
"No." He replied.
The demon regarded him for a moment, before stabbing him (really quite hard this time) with the pitchfork.
"I said 'come on'", the demon said. "You don't get a choice in the matter."
"It isn't about choice," Dalson said. "There isn't an afterlife, so I can't be here."
"But you are here," the demon said. "I know you are. I can see you."
"That's just anecdotal evidence", the Professor said.
The demon tried prodding, poking and stabbing him with the pitchfork a bit further, but Dalson continued to ignore the demon. Eventually, realising he could do no more, the demon went straight to Satan himself.
After some explaining (which, and let's be honest here, did not go well for the demon, who was trying to do the right thing, but that's Hell for you), Satan arranged for Professor Dalson to be carried directly to him, and his eyes held open with thorns.
"Now," Satan said, "You can no longer deny what is directly in front of your face. After all, any kind of science that atheism is a part of means that you should change your belief based on evidence and experience."
"You make a good point," Professor Dalson said, "but how do I know that this is not a dream?"
"Because this is Hell."
"How do I know I'm not dreaming Hell and, indeed, you?" the Professor responded.
"Well," Satan said, growing more annoyed, "how do you I know that I haven't dreamed you?"
"That's my point," said the Professor.
Satan conceded that he had him there, and signed over ownership of Hell to Professor Dalson before retiring to a life of solitude.
And that's how Professor Dalson became the Lord of Hell and how Hell started to run night classes in classic literature.
He woke up surrounded by fire and brimstone. A demon poked him with a pitchfork.
"Come on," the demon said. "No rest for the wicked."
The Professor sat up, looked around, and then put his head back down on the hot floor.
"No." He replied.
The demon regarded him for a moment, before stabbing him (really quite hard this time) with the pitchfork.
"I said 'come on'", the demon said. "You don't get a choice in the matter."
"It isn't about choice," Dalson said. "There isn't an afterlife, so I can't be here."
"But you are here," the demon said. "I know you are. I can see you."
"That's just anecdotal evidence", the Professor said.
The demon tried prodding, poking and stabbing him with the pitchfork a bit further, but Dalson continued to ignore the demon. Eventually, realising he could do no more, the demon went straight to Satan himself.
After some explaining (which, and let's be honest here, did not go well for the demon, who was trying to do the right thing, but that's Hell for you), Satan arranged for Professor Dalson to be carried directly to him, and his eyes held open with thorns.
"Now," Satan said, "You can no longer deny what is directly in front of your face. After all, any kind of science that atheism is a part of means that you should change your belief based on evidence and experience."
"You make a good point," Professor Dalson said, "but how do I know that this is not a dream?"
"Because this is Hell."
"How do I know I'm not dreaming Hell and, indeed, you?" the Professor responded.
"Well," Satan said, growing more annoyed, "how do you I know that I haven't dreamed you?"
"That's my point," said the Professor.
Satan conceded that he had him there, and signed over ownership of Hell to Professor Dalson before retiring to a life of solitude.
And that's how Professor Dalson became the Lord of Hell and how Hell started to run night classes in classic literature.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Some things I love about London
I've moved around a lot in my time. I was born in Scotland, lived in England, then Ireland (where my family still lives), then England again. On the plus side, it means I can describe myself as an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman. If I walk into a bar, hilarity is hoped for.
It also means that I haven't really had anywhere that I see as "mine" for most of my life. I was very much an outsider as a teenager in Ireland, and I felt much the same when I was at university.
In recent years, I've rather settled in London. And I've gone from liking it to loving it. So I thought I'd mention a handful of my favourite things.
The Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green
Well, really, I have to mention this. I've met a lot of friends via this place, through the writing group and the comedy night. It's given me the chance to spread my wings with the comedy, which has been immensely more fun than I'd even hoped. It's also led to some incredibly satisfying nights of comedy, even just as an audience member. I've been very lucky.
The writing group has been a pleasure to be a part of, and it's something I would recommend to anyone, anywhere, to consider setting up. It's rewarding and really can help give you further motivation.
Simon and Tim, the owners of the shop, are both fantastic guys - entertaining and smart as hell. They're considerate to customers, and even put up with me when I was out of work and hanging around the shop far too much.
Oh, and they also sell books there. You'll find them on twitter at @biggreenbooks and you can buy books from them at their website.
The Prince Charles Cinema
This is basically cinematic paradise. It's run by people who know their films, both modern and classic. It's cheap as chips, especially considering it's at Leicester Square. Even the popcorn is very reasonably priced.
Highlights this year have included a "Girl with the..." marathon, a screening of "Casablanca" and the "Swear-a-long-a-South-Park".
If you're in London, and a movie-buff, and you arent a member of this place, you should consider it. You'll also get discounts at some places in town with your membership card, including Forbidden Planet and Gosh! Comics.
The Prince Charles Cinema website and twitter.
The Underground
It's just fantastic. It really is. Sure, it's annoying sometimes, especially when it's busy and you're squashed up against someone else in a way that you feel uncomfortable being without buying them dinner first, or when you're waiting around for a delayed train, but do take the time to consider what it achieves.
The next time you're waiting for a train, but when it turns up and is too busy to get on, try and work out how many people are in that carriage.
Then multiply it by the amount of carriages on the train.
Then consider how many trains pass through that station on that line.
Now think about all the other stations and lines.
Yeah. That's a lot of people. The fact that it works at all is somewhat impressive, let alone how well it usually handles the flow.
As something else to think about, why not check out the fantastic posters in their collection?
The Pubs
London has a fantastic pub culture. There are some brilliant pubs in the city. My personal favourites are these:
The Phoenix Artist Club
Located under the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road, this is a strange mixture between dark, stylish jazz house and massively camp theatre bar. Catch it on the right night, and it's brilliant. It also used to serve popcorn as a bar snack and should really do that again.
The Phoenix
The Angel
Round the corner from Forbidden Planet (my personal Mecca), this is a strange little pub. I keep discovering rooms I didn't know it had. Most recently, I realised it had an upstairs, which holds the really strange experience of feeling like you're having a pint in your nan's living room. And it does wheat beer. Hooray.
The Angel
The Dolric Arch
Formerly the Head of Steam, this is one of the best hidden treasures in the capital (especially for real ale lovers). Most people sit in one of the disappointing pubs in Euston Station itself while waiting for a train, and it's easy to get in and out of the station without having any idea that this place is here, as it's kind of hidden away from certain angles. But it's a real spit-and-sawdust style old pub, with great beer and a lovely relaxed atmosphere. It's a particularly great place to wait for a train. Take a book, sit with a pint and watch the world go by. It's bliss.
The Dolric Arch
Wandering around
I love walking around London. Just looking out for things you don't look at often, or checking out places you haven't been to before. If you regularly walk between two points in London, vary up your route and you're almost guaranteed to find something interesting.
My personal favourite walk is from London Bridge station (via the Hays Galleria) to the Houses of Parliament. You walk along the Thames and pass the HMS Belfast, Shakespeare's Globe, Blackfriars, the OXO Tower, the Millenium Eye... days worth of sight-seeing in a couple of hours stroll. And you can finish it off by walking down to Leicester Square and finding some good food.
Yeah, I was just in a good mood and thinking about London.
Yes, it's busy. Yes, you have to put up with black snot after a week of living there. Yes, you have to get used to moving fast and finding yourself getting annoyed with people who think that the bottom of the escalator at Picadilly Circus is a good place to take a group photo. Yes, you're aware of crime (I've had my phone, wallet and car stolen while in London at various points, thankfully none of the violently). Yes, it's expensive. Yes, there's a lot to get annoyed by.
But God,I love this place. I really love it. And there are plenty of reasons why. These were just some of the ones that came to mind.
It also means that I haven't really had anywhere that I see as "mine" for most of my life. I was very much an outsider as a teenager in Ireland, and I felt much the same when I was at university.
In recent years, I've rather settled in London. And I've gone from liking it to loving it. So I thought I'd mention a handful of my favourite things.
The Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green
Well, really, I have to mention this. I've met a lot of friends via this place, through the writing group and the comedy night. It's given me the chance to spread my wings with the comedy, which has been immensely more fun than I'd even hoped. It's also led to some incredibly satisfying nights of comedy, even just as an audience member. I've been very lucky.
The writing group has been a pleasure to be a part of, and it's something I would recommend to anyone, anywhere, to consider setting up. It's rewarding and really can help give you further motivation.
Simon and Tim, the owners of the shop, are both fantastic guys - entertaining and smart as hell. They're considerate to customers, and even put up with me when I was out of work and hanging around the shop far too much.
Oh, and they also sell books there. You'll find them on twitter at @biggreenbooks and you can buy books from them at their website.
The Prince Charles Cinema
This is basically cinematic paradise. It's run by people who know their films, both modern and classic. It's cheap as chips, especially considering it's at Leicester Square. Even the popcorn is very reasonably priced.
Highlights this year have included a "Girl with the..." marathon, a screening of "Casablanca" and the "Swear-a-long-a-South-Park".
If you're in London, and a movie-buff, and you arent a member of this place, you should consider it. You'll also get discounts at some places in town with your membership card, including Forbidden Planet and Gosh! Comics.
The Prince Charles Cinema website and twitter.
The Underground
It's just fantastic. It really is. Sure, it's annoying sometimes, especially when it's busy and you're squashed up against someone else in a way that you feel uncomfortable being without buying them dinner first, or when you're waiting around for a delayed train, but do take the time to consider what it achieves.
The next time you're waiting for a train, but when it turns up and is too busy to get on, try and work out how many people are in that carriage.
Then multiply it by the amount of carriages on the train.
Then consider how many trains pass through that station on that line.
Now think about all the other stations and lines.
Yeah. That's a lot of people. The fact that it works at all is somewhat impressive, let alone how well it usually handles the flow.
As something else to think about, why not check out the fantastic posters in their collection?
The Pubs
London has a fantastic pub culture. There are some brilliant pubs in the city. My personal favourites are these:
The Phoenix Artist Club
Located under the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road, this is a strange mixture between dark, stylish jazz house and massively camp theatre bar. Catch it on the right night, and it's brilliant. It also used to serve popcorn as a bar snack and should really do that again.
The Phoenix
The Angel
Round the corner from Forbidden Planet (my personal Mecca), this is a strange little pub. I keep discovering rooms I didn't know it had. Most recently, I realised it had an upstairs, which holds the really strange experience of feeling like you're having a pint in your nan's living room. And it does wheat beer. Hooray.
The Angel
The Dolric Arch
Formerly the Head of Steam, this is one of the best hidden treasures in the capital (especially for real ale lovers). Most people sit in one of the disappointing pubs in Euston Station itself while waiting for a train, and it's easy to get in and out of the station without having any idea that this place is here, as it's kind of hidden away from certain angles. But it's a real spit-and-sawdust style old pub, with great beer and a lovely relaxed atmosphere. It's a particularly great place to wait for a train. Take a book, sit with a pint and watch the world go by. It's bliss.
The Dolric Arch
Wandering around
I love walking around London. Just looking out for things you don't look at often, or checking out places you haven't been to before. If you regularly walk between two points in London, vary up your route and you're almost guaranteed to find something interesting.
My personal favourite walk is from London Bridge station (via the Hays Galleria) to the Houses of Parliament. You walk along the Thames and pass the HMS Belfast, Shakespeare's Globe, Blackfriars, the OXO Tower, the Millenium Eye... days worth of sight-seeing in a couple of hours stroll. And you can finish it off by walking down to Leicester Square and finding some good food.
Yeah, I was just in a good mood and thinking about London.
Yes, it's busy. Yes, you have to put up with black snot after a week of living there. Yes, you have to get used to moving fast and finding yourself getting annoyed with people who think that the bottom of the escalator at Picadilly Circus is a good place to take a group photo. Yes, you're aware of crime (I've had my phone, wallet and car stolen while in London at various points, thankfully none of the violently). Yes, it's expensive. Yes, there's a lot to get annoyed by.
But God,I love this place. I really love it. And there are plenty of reasons why. These were just some of the ones that came to mind.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
The Warning (Short Story)
'On the twenty second of November, at twelve forty five, an earthquake will hit Prague. It will kill two hundred and fifty thousand people.'
I didn't take it seriously at first. In this job, you don't take things like that seriously. I had one patient tell me, every night, that the sun wouldn't come up the next morning unless a black child was killed. You don't take things like that seriously. You'd go crazy if you did. So, I thought nothing of it, gave him his medication. An hour later, he was asleep in his room.
The next day, at eleven minutes past three in the afternoon, he said it again. Word for word.
'On the twenty second of November, at twelve forty five, an earthquake will hit Prague. It will kill two hundred and fifty thousand people.'
I would say that I thought nothing of it this time, but there was something unusual about the way he was saying it. He wasn't anguished about it. He wasn't shouting it, screaming it, or in any way frantic. He was stating it calmly, as absolute fact. The same way he would state what was on the lunch menu on a Tuesday.
Most times, when the patients come up with 'prophecies' - a word that I use very, very lightly - it's a form of transference. It comes from a fixation on something else, which they have begun to loosen their grip on. Then, with the mental energy that they were using to fixate on this thing, they obsess over something. It usually involves celebrities. Ten years ago, we were being told that Michael Jackson would die three days before he hit forty. Now, we're told that Justin Bieber will die the day after his wedding. Other times, it involves politicians, or whatever environmental threat is inthe papers. Natural disasters aren't unheard of either, but usually, whatever they fixate on, they obsess on. This wasn't the way this patient was.
I asked him why he thought this would happen. He didn't know. I asked him if he read it somewhere. He didn't know. I asked him where he got the idea from. He didn't know. He said he knew it in the same way that he knew that fire was hot. He just knew it. So, while I thought nothing of the specific points he was making, I was intrigued by the way he was saying it. It was almost like he was saying 'why wouldn't this happen?'
It quickly became part of the routine for the day. Ten a.m. - hit work. Eleven - start one-on-one sessions, one o’clock – lunch. Eleven minutes past three - earthquakes and Prague.
He didn't just say it to me - he just said it, regardless of who was around. Other patients, other doctors. He said it in exactly the same tone. And in exactly the same way it happens with everything else, once it becomes part of the routine, it stops being something important.
Until I spoke to an old colleague in London at a party. I'm embarrassed to admit that the party was a 'Friends Reunited' one. A group of twenty year old students meeting again as forty year olds. Long hair and sexually transmitted diseases replaced by two cars, two mortgages, and worrying about your own child's long hair and sexually transmitted diseases. There was flowing alcohol, and stilted conversation, until I caught up with Neil, an old classmate of mine.
Neil and I had been close friends throughout most of university, but hadn't kept in touch. It happens. You swear you'll be lifelong friends, then promptly move to opposite sides of the country without leaving forwarding addresses. We talked for a while, and compared notes on our lives, and eventually just got drunk together. We talked about alcohol, we talked about what our hopes and goals had been, we talked about the women in our lives, and we talked about work. And then he mentioned something strange about a patient he knew.
This patient had been catatonic for three years, since she had been raped by three men. She had been in denial first, and then became withdrawn. As the court case came closer, her withdrawal became so intense that, one day, she stopped talking or moving. She was able to be moved, and she could be prompted to basic moves, but was otherwise totally catatonic. Until two weeks ago, that is. She didn't break the catatonic state for long, but she broke it for a few seconds. The few seconds it took for her to speak two sentences, her voice barely audible.
'On the twenty second of November, at twelve forty five, an earthquake will hit Prague. It will kill two hundred and fifty thousand people.'
She said it at eleven minutes past three. For the first time, three weeks ago, and then daily, at the same time every day. It was now the nineteenth of October.
I sobered immediately. And once I told the story of my patient, so did Neil. We compared stories in more detail, and we compared notes. We couldn't find any common ground between the patients, other than the basic fact that they were dealing with mental issues - and even those mental issues had no common ground.
The next day, I drove to Neil's work, having called in sick to my own, and we spent hours discussing how to proceed. Did we believe what they were saying? Not yet. We were more interested in trying to find out why the two patients were sharing a prophetical experience. Over the next few days, we exhausted every possibility we could work out about the two people's histories. The chances of them having crossed paths were minute. And so we wasted three days. Three days closer to the twenty second of November.
We had decided to quietly begin to spread some information out. Colleagues speaking to colleagues - and two days later, we heard back from a doctor in Scotland. She, too, had a patient who was repeating the same thing, day in, day out.
With anything like this, it starts off small, and begins to pick up speed very quickly. It starts off with three, but quickly grows. Two weeks later, we knew of no less than fourteen patients around the UK that were repeating the same two sentences at the same time each day. And no matter what we tried, we couldn't find any links between any of the patients, other than the fact that they were all in institutions.
We didn't go to the papers with it, or alert the authorities. Not yet. To be honest, I couldn't really tell you why. I could come up with a list of excuses, but the truth is, we just didn't think we'd be taken seriously. We kept it within the medical community, more or less - we were also fairly sure that if somebody was to keep doing it every day, chances were that it would either break in the newspapers, or somebody would make a path straight to their nearest psychiatrist.
A Doctor in Cornwall came up with the idea of mass hypnosis, which seemed to ring true for a while. We worked on it for about a week, actually. As a hypothesis, it made a lot of sense - a TV hypnotist plants some subliminal idea while they are on their shows, which would only work on somebody who happened to be extremely suggestible. It wasn't totally outside of the realm of possibility - not that all of these people were fully hypnotised, but that they'd picked up the same thing. Until we found out that one of the institutions made a policy of having no televisions in the building, and there was no way that specific patient could have seen one any time recently. We were frustrated. That one had beenworking so well.
The next day, we found out about a case in Ireland.
Then two in Africa.
Seventeen in Germany.
Over forty in the United States.
Eventually we had exactly a hundred in total. All around the world. Different corners of the globe. All of them saying it at exactly eleven minutes past three in the afternoon, UK time. Some were even saying it in their sleep.
We couldn't work it out. There was no link. None whatsoever. There was no medium that could have reached all of these people at the same time, in the same way. Every path we went down came to a dead end.
And so we spent hours, and days trying to work it out, when instead, we could have been trying to do something about it. It was the fifteenth of November when we actually began to stop thinking about why they were saying what they were saying, and actually think about the implications of what they were saying. We'd been approaching all of this so clinically and logically, we had never stopped to think that it might actually be true. All of that time wasted, when we could have been trying to convince people to listen to us. To take us seriously.
We started contacting people. Not newspapers, not quite yet; but we got in touch with the Czech Academy of Sciences, the closest thing to an authority in the situation. They took us about as seriously as you would expect. It didn't help our case that the Czech Republic is a seismically quiet area.
So we took it to the newspapers. Days to go and we finally took it public. A lot of us knew that we would be effectively ending our careers by doing so, but we could no longer take the risk that we were wrong. We knew that the best way to do this was to present ourselves as a group. One that was geographically disparate, and one with few obvious other links. A group of Doctors may just be taken seriously.
Let me pose you a question. You're reading a newspaper, and on page thirteen, there is a story about how one hundred crazy people are predicting Prague will take substantial damage, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, and a bunch of Doctors are taking it seriously. Would it make you leave the city?
I thought not.
On the twenty second of November, at twelve forty five, an earthquake hit Prague. There was no way of knowing exactly how many people were killed, but eventual reports estimated the number to be close to three hundred thousand people.
I eventually took my theory public. My belief is that some people are more sensitive to the planet itself. If your body feels pain, it sends messages to your brain. When we damage the planet, it sends messages to us, but it sends it to that portion of ourbrain that we've either left behind through evolution, or that we haven't evolved enough to use properly. Except for a tiny, tiny amount of people. But being so sensitive makes these people vulnerable to breakdowns, and to psychotic episodes. They all break down in different ways, or they become more vulnerable to mental trauma. And when the brain is wiring itself differently in order to cope, it listens to what the world is telling it.
The world was sending us a very clear message, but we couldn't hear it. It wants us to stop damaging it. And it doesn't want us to kill ourselves.
They didn't take me seriously. I pressed the subject, I wrote papers, I wrote letters, I made websites, I withdrew from my family, my job, my life, and I desperately tried to put the message out. Eventually, I was arrested for attacking a member of parliament, and causing serious bodily harm. I was deemed to have a lack of control over my own actions, and I was placed in an institution. They say I don't know what I am doing, or why I do things.
But I do know one thing.
I know that on the Seventeenth of August in this year, at twenty eight minutes past six in the evening, the President of The United States of America will push the Nuclear Button. Fourteen million people will be killed.
I didn't take it seriously at first. In this job, you don't take things like that seriously. I had one patient tell me, every night, that the sun wouldn't come up the next morning unless a black child was killed. You don't take things like that seriously. You'd go crazy if you did. So, I thought nothing of it, gave him his medication. An hour later, he was asleep in his room.
The next day, at eleven minutes past three in the afternoon, he said it again. Word for word.
'On the twenty second of November, at twelve forty five, an earthquake will hit Prague. It will kill two hundred and fifty thousand people.'
I would say that I thought nothing of it this time, but there was something unusual about the way he was saying it. He wasn't anguished about it. He wasn't shouting it, screaming it, or in any way frantic. He was stating it calmly, as absolute fact. The same way he would state what was on the lunch menu on a Tuesday.
Most times, when the patients come up with 'prophecies' - a word that I use very, very lightly - it's a form of transference. It comes from a fixation on something else, which they have begun to loosen their grip on. Then, with the mental energy that they were using to fixate on this thing, they obsess over something. It usually involves celebrities. Ten years ago, we were being told that Michael Jackson would die three days before he hit forty. Now, we're told that Justin Bieber will die the day after his wedding. Other times, it involves politicians, or whatever environmental threat is inthe papers. Natural disasters aren't unheard of either, but usually, whatever they fixate on, they obsess on. This wasn't the way this patient was.
I asked him why he thought this would happen. He didn't know. I asked him if he read it somewhere. He didn't know. I asked him where he got the idea from. He didn't know. He said he knew it in the same way that he knew that fire was hot. He just knew it. So, while I thought nothing of the specific points he was making, I was intrigued by the way he was saying it. It was almost like he was saying 'why wouldn't this happen?'
It quickly became part of the routine for the day. Ten a.m. - hit work. Eleven - start one-on-one sessions, one o’clock – lunch. Eleven minutes past three - earthquakes and Prague.
He didn't just say it to me - he just said it, regardless of who was around. Other patients, other doctors. He said it in exactly the same tone. And in exactly the same way it happens with everything else, once it becomes part of the routine, it stops being something important.
Until I spoke to an old colleague in London at a party. I'm embarrassed to admit that the party was a 'Friends Reunited' one. A group of twenty year old students meeting again as forty year olds. Long hair and sexually transmitted diseases replaced by two cars, two mortgages, and worrying about your own child's long hair and sexually transmitted diseases. There was flowing alcohol, and stilted conversation, until I caught up with Neil, an old classmate of mine.
Neil and I had been close friends throughout most of university, but hadn't kept in touch. It happens. You swear you'll be lifelong friends, then promptly move to opposite sides of the country without leaving forwarding addresses. We talked for a while, and compared notes on our lives, and eventually just got drunk together. We talked about alcohol, we talked about what our hopes and goals had been, we talked about the women in our lives, and we talked about work. And then he mentioned something strange about a patient he knew.
This patient had been catatonic for three years, since she had been raped by three men. She had been in denial first, and then became withdrawn. As the court case came closer, her withdrawal became so intense that, one day, she stopped talking or moving. She was able to be moved, and she could be prompted to basic moves, but was otherwise totally catatonic. Until two weeks ago, that is. She didn't break the catatonic state for long, but she broke it for a few seconds. The few seconds it took for her to speak two sentences, her voice barely audible.
'On the twenty second of November, at twelve forty five, an earthquake will hit Prague. It will kill two hundred and fifty thousand people.'
She said it at eleven minutes past three. For the first time, three weeks ago, and then daily, at the same time every day. It was now the nineteenth of October.
I sobered immediately. And once I told the story of my patient, so did Neil. We compared stories in more detail, and we compared notes. We couldn't find any common ground between the patients, other than the basic fact that they were dealing with mental issues - and even those mental issues had no common ground.
The next day, I drove to Neil's work, having called in sick to my own, and we spent hours discussing how to proceed. Did we believe what they were saying? Not yet. We were more interested in trying to find out why the two patients were sharing a prophetical experience. Over the next few days, we exhausted every possibility we could work out about the two people's histories. The chances of them having crossed paths were minute. And so we wasted three days. Three days closer to the twenty second of November.
We had decided to quietly begin to spread some information out. Colleagues speaking to colleagues - and two days later, we heard back from a doctor in Scotland. She, too, had a patient who was repeating the same thing, day in, day out.
With anything like this, it starts off small, and begins to pick up speed very quickly. It starts off with three, but quickly grows. Two weeks later, we knew of no less than fourteen patients around the UK that were repeating the same two sentences at the same time each day. And no matter what we tried, we couldn't find any links between any of the patients, other than the fact that they were all in institutions.
We didn't go to the papers with it, or alert the authorities. Not yet. To be honest, I couldn't really tell you why. I could come up with a list of excuses, but the truth is, we just didn't think we'd be taken seriously. We kept it within the medical community, more or less - we were also fairly sure that if somebody was to keep doing it every day, chances were that it would either break in the newspapers, or somebody would make a path straight to their nearest psychiatrist.
A Doctor in Cornwall came up with the idea of mass hypnosis, which seemed to ring true for a while. We worked on it for about a week, actually. As a hypothesis, it made a lot of sense - a TV hypnotist plants some subliminal idea while they are on their shows, which would only work on somebody who happened to be extremely suggestible. It wasn't totally outside of the realm of possibility - not that all of these people were fully hypnotised, but that they'd picked up the same thing. Until we found out that one of the institutions made a policy of having no televisions in the building, and there was no way that specific patient could have seen one any time recently. We were frustrated. That one had beenworking so well.
The next day, we found out about a case in Ireland.
Then two in Africa.
Seventeen in Germany.
Over forty in the United States.
Eventually we had exactly a hundred in total. All around the world. Different corners of the globe. All of them saying it at exactly eleven minutes past three in the afternoon, UK time. Some were even saying it in their sleep.
We couldn't work it out. There was no link. None whatsoever. There was no medium that could have reached all of these people at the same time, in the same way. Every path we went down came to a dead end.
And so we spent hours, and days trying to work it out, when instead, we could have been trying to do something about it. It was the fifteenth of November when we actually began to stop thinking about why they were saying what they were saying, and actually think about the implications of what they were saying. We'd been approaching all of this so clinically and logically, we had never stopped to think that it might actually be true. All of that time wasted, when we could have been trying to convince people to listen to us. To take us seriously.
We started contacting people. Not newspapers, not quite yet; but we got in touch with the Czech Academy of Sciences, the closest thing to an authority in the situation. They took us about as seriously as you would expect. It didn't help our case that the Czech Republic is a seismically quiet area.
So we took it to the newspapers. Days to go and we finally took it public. A lot of us knew that we would be effectively ending our careers by doing so, but we could no longer take the risk that we were wrong. We knew that the best way to do this was to present ourselves as a group. One that was geographically disparate, and one with few obvious other links. A group of Doctors may just be taken seriously.
Let me pose you a question. You're reading a newspaper, and on page thirteen, there is a story about how one hundred crazy people are predicting Prague will take substantial damage, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, and a bunch of Doctors are taking it seriously. Would it make you leave the city?
I thought not.
On the twenty second of November, at twelve forty five, an earthquake hit Prague. There was no way of knowing exactly how many people were killed, but eventual reports estimated the number to be close to three hundred thousand people.
I eventually took my theory public. My belief is that some people are more sensitive to the planet itself. If your body feels pain, it sends messages to your brain. When we damage the planet, it sends messages to us, but it sends it to that portion of ourbrain that we've either left behind through evolution, or that we haven't evolved enough to use properly. Except for a tiny, tiny amount of people. But being so sensitive makes these people vulnerable to breakdowns, and to psychotic episodes. They all break down in different ways, or they become more vulnerable to mental trauma. And when the brain is wiring itself differently in order to cope, it listens to what the world is telling it.
The world was sending us a very clear message, but we couldn't hear it. It wants us to stop damaging it. And it doesn't want us to kill ourselves.
They didn't take me seriously. I pressed the subject, I wrote papers, I wrote letters, I made websites, I withdrew from my family, my job, my life, and I desperately tried to put the message out. Eventually, I was arrested for attacking a member of parliament, and causing serious bodily harm. I was deemed to have a lack of control over my own actions, and I was placed in an institution. They say I don't know what I am doing, or why I do things.
But I do know one thing.
I know that on the Seventeenth of August in this year, at twenty eight minutes past six in the evening, the President of The United States of America will push the Nuclear Button. Fourteen million people will be killed.
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Script - The Bus
Bit more of a slice-of-life one this, done in response to a tweet from Katrin Salyers (@areslinkysart). Again, and anyone who wants to illustrate this and take a shot at it, please do so.
HERO
HERO
She looks back at him, again with a sweet smile.
Quick bit of preamble for this one - I'm basing this on me at 13/14. I had long dark hair, usually in a ponytail, and was pretty slim at the time, if you want to make it more about me. If not, don't worry - take liberties.
In the same vein, this can be in any location you want, with as much or as little detail. But if you want to base it on reality, the bus pickup point was where the kid is walking in this picture, and it then goes through the countryside. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WiresInDaingean2.JPG.
Page 1
Panel 1
Exterior of a school bus. Kids are getting on - there's quite a large number of them.
Caption
I hated the ride to school.
Caption
School was seven miles away, and all the kids in the village got the only bus.
Caption
I was English in an Irish school. It wasn't fun.
Panel 2
We close in on a girl waiting to get on. She has blonde hair tied back, is shy and carries extra books with her school bag.
Caption
Her name was Emma. Some days, she was the only thing that stopped me deliberately missing the bus and hitching in.
Page 2
Panel 1
Interior of the bus, with kids taking seats.
Caption
I used to try to time it to sit near her.
Panel 2
She looks up, smiling.
EMMA
This one's free.
Panel 3
Our intrepid hero sits next to her, looking bolt straight ahead.
HERO
(small) hi.
Caption
This time, I was going to pluck up the courage to talk to her.
Page 3
Panel 1
Our hero looks down a little bit.
HERO
howareyouyouokay?
Panel 2
Emma looks at him.
EMMA
Sorry?
Panel 3
Back to our hero.
HERO
....you okay?
Panel 4
Back to Emma.
EMMA
Fine, thanks. You?
Panel 5
Close in on our hero. He's staring straight ahead.
Caption
Yes, I'm fine, and would you like to go out sometime?
Panel 6
Close in on our hero. Still staring straight ahead, not moving.
HERO
fine. thanks.
Page 4
Panel 1
Emma starts reading a book.
Caption
Would you like to go out with me?
Panel 2
Our hero keeps pulls out a book as well.
Panel 3
He looks up from the book.
Caption
I can do this.
Panel 4
He looks at her.
HERO
Emma?
Panel 5
She looks back at him, again with a sweet smile.
EMMA
Yeah?
Panel 6
Our hero opens his mouth.
Caption
I think I'm in love with you.
Page 5
Panel 1
Shot of the two of them.
HERO
What time is it?
What time is it?
Panel 2
A shot from the back of the bus.
Caption
There's always tomorrow.
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